Confusion prevailed over the result of the India-South Africa Women’s Cricket World Cup warm-up game on Sunday, with players, ICC, Cricket South Africa and Google posting different scorecards.

The preparations for the Women’s Cricket World Cup, which begins on March 4 in New Zealand, began with participants taking part in the first round of warm-up matches on Sunday. However, supporters were forced to seek out live updates from a variety of sources with the games not being telecast or live streamed. The ICC also wrongly mentioned the start time of the matches on their website, including the game between South Africa and India, which was initially scheduled to begin at 9am local time or 1.30am IST. However, the encounter eventually began at 11am local time, or 3.30am IST.

Batting first, India posted 244, led by a century from Harmanpreet Kaur. The target seemed to be inadequate after ICC’s live update showed that South Africa had chased down the target with four wickets in hand. They even published a match report, claiming South Africa had won by four wickets, on their website. The official Twitter handle of Cricket South Africa too congratulated the team on the fine win, with a post that read, “Captain Sune Luus (87) and Laura Wolvaardt (85) anchored the #MomentumProteas chase as they claimed victory over India Women in their #CW22 warm-up match.”

Both posts were later deleted.

What led to the confusion was that ICC’s manual scoresheet at the venue had India as the winners, triumphing by two runs.

Various platforms provided different results: some suggested Harmanpreet’s final score was 114, with others stating she ended with 103 runs to her name. What made the proceedings even more bizarre was that the ICC’s live update had Sneh Rana’s score as 3 off 23 deliveries with -2 fours after the conclusion of the game. Google’s real-time updates, at one point, had South Africa on 242-7 in 52.2 overs, needing another 3 runs to win from -14 deliveries.

The confusion led to fans asking the players who took part in the game about the correct result, with two India cricketers, Yastika Bhatia and Rana, taking to Twitter to clear the air about the correct scorecard. However, both provided a different scorecard, and matters were complicated even further.

This was not the only warm-up match that had an incorrect scorecard for most parts, with the game between Australia and West Indies seeing similar confusion.

India were eventually named the winners of the warm-up game, with the ICC later updating the correct scorecard on their website.

Related tags:

India Women's Cricket